


"Of All the Trees That Are In the Wood"

by farad



Series: Christmas Carols [10]
Category: Magnificent Seven
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/pseuds/farad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>December 28</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Of All the Trees That Are In the Wood"

**Author's Note:**

> Set the Christmas after "Obsession"; thanks to Huntersglenn for the beta. Thanks also to Zeke Black and her awesome Magnificent Seven Handbook, with transcripts, pictures of the clothes the boys wore, and every thing else, and the people at Daybook for their quick answers to my specific detail needs! All mistakes my very own. 
> 
> The word 'Numunuu' is what the Comanche people call themselves. It means 'The People'. There are different bands within the Comanche Nation, in much the same way that there are different states within the United States. Thought English is the national language of the US, there are regional accents and dialects ('Southern', 'Northern', Texan, et cetera). The same is true of the Comanche language.

 

_**"The holly and the ivy,** _

_**When they are both full grown** _

_**Of all the trees that are in the wood** _

_**The holly bears the crown** _

_**O the rising of the sun** _

_**And the running of the deer** _

_**The playing of the merry organ** _

_**Sweet singing of the choir"** _

 

\--from "The Holly and the Ivy", verses one and six;

the song is thought to have Pagan origins and could therefore date back over 1000 years.

 

 

"Why do you stay with them?" The question was low, the words in a dialect of Comanche that he still wasn't quite sure he heard right.

 

But the contempt in Chanu's voice left little doubt about who the 'them' was.

 

Vin added another log to the fire and huddled closer to it. It had started raining again last night, more ice, and bigger ice this time. He had thought about going back to town today, and he might yet. Maybe.

 

"Reckon you can look at me and see I'm one of them," he answered in the same language, though a different dialect. He'd lived with people of the the Penatuka band of the Numunuu, while Chanu's people were part of the Kwahada band od the Numunuu who lived in the higher elevations of the Llano Estacado. Had lived.

 

Now, most of the Numunuu lived on reservations. Or they died by the hand of the Army.

 

Chanu did look at him, his dark eyes hard. He brought one hand out from under his buffalo hide and placed it against Vin's chest. "It is not how you look," he said, "it is what is in here. Or have you been back among them so long you have forgotten this?"

 

Vin looked down at the long fingers, dark against the tan of his buckskin jacket. Had he forgotten that?

 

He shook his head, looking back into the fire. Chanu drew his hand back under the hide, muttering something low that Vin didn't understand, then he said more clearly, "Your heart is with us. You could have a home here."

 

Vin sighed, looking past the fire, past the horses, to the water dripping from the mouth of the cave.

 

"Tell me," Chanu said, leaning in a little closer, "what have they done for you this year? I see only the one horse. I do not see you in the company of other men but alone – will none of them stand with you?"

 

"You're alone," Vin countered, that one point more irritating than the others. "Did you choose it?"

 

Chanu sighed but looked away. "Yes, so we will leave that one. But still, no horses. No signs of success."

 

"Guess it depends on what you think 'success' is," Vin said. "This year, 'success' is being alive. All seven of us." It had been a near thing too many times, first JD, then Chris, even Ezra, who'd been shot twice and saved twice by chance. Josiah had almost got himself hanged, Buck had almost been killed in a sword fight, all of them had almost been killed by men Ella Gaines had hired for the purpose. That bitch.

 

Chanu chuckled. "That is as it should be," he said, but he grinned, and Vin grinned with him.

 

Chanu had a point, though. Surviving was a given. It was something Vin had spent his life doing, one way or another. He'd pretty much said that to Buck several days ago, that afternoon in the saloon.

 

Life should be about more than that. Maybe not acquiring wealth – horses if you were Numunuu, gold or cattle or land if you were white. Having enough to live on was good, having enough to eat, having a warm, dry place to stay – those were good things. He had learned how to get those, through hunting, fishing, finding what nature offered, like this cave.

 

Much of that he had learned from his time with the Numunuu. Some of it he had learned from being in white society.

 

He could survive. But that didn't seem to be enough anymore. Or maybe, as Chanu was saying, he'd let himself get soft, let himself forget that white men weren't to be trusted.

 

"You should come to the village," Chanu said, twisting around to lay on one side, still huddled in his buffalo fur. "We will find a wife for you, bear you strong sons."

 

"You ready for that?" Vin countered.

 

Chanu sighed but it turned into a yawn through which he said, "No, I am not. I still dream of her. Of our child." His tone was low and sad, barely loud enough to be heard over the chiming of ice and rain outside.

 

Vin wasn't either. He wasn't sure he ever would be, but he knew he wasn't now. He'd never had any illusions about women, not the way Buck and JD – hell, maybe even Ezra, had. One of his first memories was of his mother staring down the barrel of a shotgun, notching a shell into the chamber as a couple of men tried to bust down the door of their tiny shack. She'd shot the first one as he'd come through the door, the rock salt cutting through his pants and into his groin, blood splattering all over the place.

 

His grandmother had held off a pack of coyotes going after their small herd of sheep, then shot a wandering thief who tried to steal their horse.

 

He'd learned while living with the Numunuu that the women were the most vicious, the ones who could torture the best, causing the most pain while keeping their prisoner alive the longest. It was from them that he had learned the most about how to get someone to tell him what he needed to know.

 

What had happened with Maddy and Kate Stokes hadn't surprised him much, though he'd worried for JD. After the accidental killing of the Neuhaus woman, JD was still wrestling with what it meant to live out here, outside the lines of 'civilized life'.

 

But then there had been Ella Gaines.

 

Nine months ago, she'd offered Chris a life he thought he wanted – and hell, maybe he did. He'd had something like it with Sara, the idea of 'home', not just in 'family' but in a working ranch, one that supported itself. Doing what he loved, being with a woman he loved.

 

But she'd been willing to kill anyone who kept her from what she wanted and what she wanted was Chris. She'd killed Sara and Adam, would have killed all of them, too. Instead, her men had almost killed Chris.

 

In some ways, she had. The man who'd survived that bullet wasn't the same man who'd come after him when Eli Joe had trapped him. He was barely recognizable as the man they'd followed to Purgatorio to find Cletus Fowler, though that was probably the closest, that man and the man who they had saved from the prison camp.

 

Vin had stayed for the past nine months for many reasons, but most of them had to do with Chris: protecting him while he healed, in case that bitch came back, or any of Chris' other enemies; trying to find the bitch so Chris could settle the score; trying to keep Chris from getting himself killed while he was too weak to fight the fights he wanted to fight.

 

But it was going on nine months. He hadn't lied to Buck when he said that he liked to get away to think about things when Christmas came around. He did. But it wasn't just because of his ma's ma and growing up with her. It was also from his time with the Numunuu. The dead of winter was when one thought about the past year and planned for the next one. And as Chanu had said, it was time for him to weigh what he had gotten this past year against what he wanted. Surviving was a given, because he had – they all had.

 

The rain grew heavier and a chill wafted through the cave, reminding him of the fire. He got up and moved to the stack of wood he'd gathered before this set of rains started, gathering up a load and bringing it back to where he'd been sitting. His horse and Chanu's were huddled up against each other near the mouth of the cave, their backs to the opening. If it got colder, he'd bring them closer in.

 

He added more wood to the fire, poking it to keep it going. Much of the wood was wet from the ice and rain they'd had Christmas Eve, but he'd stored dry wood here the last time he was here, in the fall, so there was enough to keep the fire going.

 

He could stay here – hell, he did, often enough.

 

But it was a cave and he was getting too old, too spoiled more like, to want to spend all his sleeping time in a place like this. Maybe he was as white he he'd tried to convince Chanu he was.

 

He smiled to himself, amused that he was thinking about creature comforts, more amused that he was lying to himself. He tried not to do that. It was an easy way to get himself killed.

 

"You are too good to them," Chanu said, his voice rough from sleep. "You should come to us, where we respect your true value. Where you are wanted."

 

The memories of Buck cajoling him into staying that extra night, the look on JD's face when he'd said he was leaving, the way Ezra had continued to pour brandy for him, the way Josiah had sought him out to talk about his beliefs – not to argue with him, but to talk about them, the way Nathan had asked him for help finding the herbs he needed to make the salves and ointments he'd planned to take to the reservation.

 

The way Chris had asked him to stay on Christmas Eve, when he'd dropped by to deliver Mary's gift of raisin bread and repeated her invitation for Chris to come back to town for the big Christmas lunch. She'd also made him the same invitation, though she hadn't shared raisin bread with him.

 

Chris had, though.

 

"Reckon they want me well enough," Vin said, and he felt a warmth that wasn't coming from the fire, a warmth that he wasn't too familiar with. But one that he knew he wanted to try to keep.

 

Chanu grunted and rolled onto his back. "When you tire of their childishness and their wicked gods, you know where you are welcome."

 

He looked over at his friend and grinned. "Long as I save your hide once a year, I'm welcome?"

 

Chanu looked up at him then grinned. "And I, yours," he countered. "Next year, you can find your own turkeys."

 

They laughed together, sharing the heat of the fire and the company and knowing that in the morning, they would each return to their own villages, because that's where their true families were.

 


End file.
